Nice to see an attempt at disrupting consolidated marketplaces.
My 2c: The open standard is great for creators in the long run but it doesn't solve their today problem: distribution. Creators won't leave predatory marketplaces despite higher costs because that's where they get distribution. The only way to truly convince established creators to consider Inkverse is by showing compelling readership numbers. It doesn't have to match the same number, but it should be in the top.
The more direct way to truly get viewers in today's internet is to buy them via ads.
athoneycutt · 3h ago
Yass! I've wanted a way to purchase (not rent whatever) comics for a while now plus not be tied to a platform. I mainly get them from Humble Bundle so I can get the files to selfhost them on Kavita for the wife to read as well. Thank you for the platform!
Inspiration for Inkverse: I wanted to build an indie-friendly comic platform, similar to what Bandcamp does for indie musicians. If you are not familiar with the digital comics space, it is a brutal industry to earn a living in as a creator. It is a niche industry dominated by some big players and they take full advantage of that. For example: If you want to access the monetization tools on any of the big platforms, you have to negotiate with them on a contract where they get exclusive IP rights to your comic and take a 50 to 75% revenue cut. In contrast, Inkverse has standard terms of service for all our creators and takes no IP rights. Right now we have a Patreon integration for monetization and in the future we plan to add our own payments system (with a fairer rev split ~10%).
Inkverse is open-source ie) all our code is open and available for people to use, but I think, more importantly, all the comics use an open-source comic specification. Why use a comic specification? None of the comics on Inkverse are hosted on Inkverse, a creator self-hosts their own comic on their own server OR uses a tool like Taddy (https://taddy.org) to help them distribute their comic. The benefit is there is no platform lock-in, a creator can share their comic feed with any other comic app, not just Inkverse.
Inkverse specifically focuses on comics that use the webtoons format. Webtoon is a comic format, made specifically for mobile phones (vertical scrolling). Here is an example: https://inkverse.co/comics/a-is-for-alice. It is the format a lot of the younger generation uses to read comics. I do think Inkverse will always focus on the Webtoons format, but the SSS spec and Taddy can support other types of comic formats like page layout or manga etc in the future. btw, If you are a user of Komga or Kavita, Inkverse may not be for you as it isn't a comic app for self-hosting your own comics, it's more a way for creators to more easily distribute their comics to their fans.
Lastly, one really cool technical thing I did: I implemented OAuth directly in the SSS feed. Creators want to be able to have exclusive episodes of their comics only available to their paying backers. So, on the SSS feed, you can specify OAuth endpoints which can be used to get back a token to view exclusive content. In practice what this looks like is, a creator connects their Patreon and picks which episodes are exclusive to their Patreon backers, and readers on Inkverse can connect their Patreon and only Patreon backers of the creator get access to read their exclusive episodes.
My 2c: The open standard is great for creators in the long run but it doesn't solve their today problem: distribution. Creators won't leave predatory marketplaces despite higher costs because that's where they get distribution. The only way to truly convince established creators to consider Inkverse is by showing compelling readership numbers. It doesn't have to match the same number, but it should be in the top.
The more direct way to truly get viewers in today's internet is to buy them via ads.
Inspiration for Inkverse: I wanted to build an indie-friendly comic platform, similar to what Bandcamp does for indie musicians. If you are not familiar with the digital comics space, it is a brutal industry to earn a living in as a creator. It is a niche industry dominated by some big players and they take full advantage of that. For example: If you want to access the monetization tools on any of the big platforms, you have to negotiate with them on a contract where they get exclusive IP rights to your comic and take a 50 to 75% revenue cut. In contrast, Inkverse has standard terms of service for all our creators and takes no IP rights. Right now we have a Patreon integration for monetization and in the future we plan to add our own payments system (with a fairer rev split ~10%).
Inkverse is open-source ie) all our code is open and available for people to use, but I think, more importantly, all the comics use an open-source comic specification. Why use a comic specification? None of the comics on Inkverse are hosted on Inkverse, a creator self-hosts their own comic on their own server OR uses a tool like Taddy (https://taddy.org) to help them distribute their comic. The benefit is there is no platform lock-in, a creator can share their comic feed with any other comic app, not just Inkverse.
Inkverse specifically focuses on comics that use the webtoons format. Webtoon is a comic format, made specifically for mobile phones (vertical scrolling). Here is an example: https://inkverse.co/comics/a-is-for-alice. It is the format a lot of the younger generation uses to read comics. I do think Inkverse will always focus on the Webtoons format, but the SSS spec and Taddy can support other types of comic formats like page layout or manga etc in the future. btw, If you are a user of Komga or Kavita, Inkverse may not be for you as it isn't a comic app for self-hosting your own comics, it's more a way for creators to more easily distribute their comics to their fans.
Lastly, one really cool technical thing I did: I implemented OAuth directly in the SSS feed. Creators want to be able to have exclusive episodes of their comics only available to their paying backers. So, on the SSS feed, you can specify OAuth endpoints which can be used to get back a token to view exclusive content. In practice what this looks like is, a creator connects their Patreon and picks which episodes are exclusive to their Patreon backers, and readers on Inkverse can connect their Patreon and only Patreon backers of the creator get access to read their exclusive episodes.
Stack: Typescript, React/React Native, GraphQL, Node.js.
Let me know what you think!
Inkverse: https://inkverse.co GitHub: http://github.com/taddyorg/inkverse SSS comic specification: http://3s-docs.org/ OAuth on SSS: https://3s-docs.org/hosting-provider-oauth